Chopped Cabbage with Vegetable Mince in Tomato Sauce (Canned)
This canned preserve comes straight out of the Soviet-era home-stocking tradition, when the autumn haul of cabbage, carrots, and roots was banked for the whole winter. It’s really a ready-made cold appetizer in a jar: carrots, onion, and white roots (parsnip, parsley root, celeriac) are sauteed, folded into lightly blanched white cabbage, and covered in a rich tomato sauce. The quantities are scaled for a serious run, around ten half-liter jars, so it earns its keep only when you have a genuine glut.
Success hinges on the cabbage: blanch it exactly one minute in boiling water or steam, then shock it in ice water. That sheds the raw toughness but leaves a slight snap, so it won’t slump after sterilizing. The carrots and roots need to be sauteed to real gold, not just softened; that caramel note is what balances the tomatoes’ acidity.
What you should know
Hot packing matters for safety here: keep the sauce no cooler than 80C (176F) and the mince heated through to 70C (158F), and run the full sterilizing time without trimming it. A puree of red bell pepper both brightens the color and deepens the sweetness. In place of “reduced tomato mass,” use a thick tomato paste or well-cooked-down fresh tomatoes; a thin, watery sauce yields a watery preserve.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 448 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Preparing the Vegetables
Chop the carrots, onion, and white roots and saute them in oil until soft.Trim the outer leaves off the white cabbage and cut it into pieces no larger than 15x15 mm.
Blanch the cabbage over steam or in boiling water for 1 minute, then cool it in cold water.
Put the sauteed vegetables in a pot, add the chopped herbs and salt, and stir well over low heat.
Add the blanched cabbage to the mixture, stir thoroughly, and heat the mass to a temperature no lower than 70C.
Tomato Sauce
At the same time, prepare the tomato sauce from the reduced tomato mass.To improve the color and increase the vitamin content, you can add up to 25% (by weight) red sweet pepper puree, reducing the amount of tomatoes accordingly.
Filling and Sterilizing
Pour a little hot sauce (no cooler than 80C) into the bottom of the prepared jars, then pack in the vegetable mince and cover it with hot tomato sauce, filling the jars to the top.Cover the jars with boiled lids and set them in a pot of water heated to 80-85C for sterilizing.
Sterilize at 100C: 0.5 l jars for 70 minutes, 1 l jars for 90 minutes.
After processing, seal the jars airtight, turn them upside down, and let them cool.
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